As a blogger, you want to ensure you use all internet channels apart from various search engines as effectively as possible to drive web traffic to your website.
Not only can you gain a worldwide audience, but you also have the power to grow your blog or business. You may already be very active on social media and have an established online persona but that does not always guarantee that your followers head to your website.
12 Top Tips to use Videos on Social Media to attract more Blog Readers
1. Create a short Video Script
Stand out from the crowd with a sharp and to-the-point video that focuses on what’s the core message of your post or content. Having a script, even for short videos, will help you lay out the groundwork and main goal for the video. You can refer to the script when in doubt and add more elements later on.
Video scripts can help you become more confident in front of the camera.
Social Media Marketing teams often use scripts as they expedite your video-making process and streamline your delivery to make the video production more efficient, budget-friendly, and resourceful.
If you have a YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok channel you may need to tailor your script to the different audiences and requirements based on video length, video format, etc. You should also bear in mind which narrative is most suitable for each platform to encourage as many viewers as possible to click on your website link added to your video.
Make sure you test different formats and scripts first, then analyze the results via the analytics features each platform offers and observe which videos get the most views and interactions. If you’re for example a travel blogger, then you should check out some travel vlogging tips to optimize your videos.
2. First impressions are everything
With the attention span of people being shorter than ever, you need to grab their attention in the first few seconds mainly. Start with a quick intro or get to the point very quickly. You can stand out from the crowd by having a few exciting first seconds with an eye-catching thumbnail.
Most of the bigger UK influencers also use this technique to get people to watch their content. You can add timestamps and video descriptions to the videos, which are especially important if you want to get viewers to find your blog or website and related posts.
3. Make all kinds of videos
People love seeing entertaining and informational videos on social media that keep them engaged. The most successful videos on video streaming platforms are the ones that manage to combine both. Being familiar with different types of videos will help you maximize your reach across all social media platforms.
Make different types of videos like vlogs and live streams so that there are a lot of different formats available for your audience to see and to even connect with you and your website. You should obviously set up social media pages for your blog or website where you can post stories and videos in combination with your written content.
Visit some of the blog pages I have created where I regularly share news and blog publications that go live:
You can run ads for these pages to reach more people such as paid Facebook ads for example that come in different formats including video, which I have also used to increase the followership.
4. Focus on good Storytelling
Good storytelling is one of the most invaluable skills that any blogger or content writer can have.
With people having more creative control over the content than ever, it is your responsibility to have a good story in a place that conveys your message effectively. This will give you an advantage over your competitors no matter what. Compare what the most successful bloggers in your niche are doing and what is trending.
Making content relevant and unique for your brand with seasonal events such as Christmas or Blue Monday can help gain additional traction on social media with the right hashtags.
However, try to develop your own style that is immediately recognizable and be your authentic self just like me:
A storyboard will help you to plan video elements, structure, materials, resources, and people you need.
5. Think about Aesthetics
Visuals are everything in the online world. Having an eye-pleasing video is a must, and key elements are ensuring you are in a well-lit space for example, and capturing a video with adequate sound quality.
When editing the video, add transitions and motions of your choice and add text incorporating the core message. This will help your video stand out more than ever. There are different filters available too in video editing apps that you can use.
With great audio and video editing tools available now, one should focus on having a unique aesthetic for their brand. This helps with brand awareness and recognition.
6. A good Setup is important
Although gear is not the most necessary thing in the world, having good gear can make a world of difference. A tripod, camera, and ring light will take you a long way. You can then later add on a mic for great audio capture. This is a great digital marketing strategy too.
Work with the gear that you can afford, and as time goes on, you will be able to hone your craft more and save up for the best equipment and then buy it.
At the start, a camera phone, ring light, and tripod are the only things you may need. This will help you get started and see what the shortcomings of this setup are.
You do not need a professional setup and can get great results even with more affordable gear. All this gear will make sure that you are not spending too much time in post-production.
Here’s one of my recent videos from a business event I attended that was recorded with a smartphone camera with the help of freelance photographer Petra Eujane who edited the video with Adobe software:
7. Short Videos are trending
Ever since Tik-Tok took over, short videos have been all the rage and you saw that my video is also under 2 minutes long. If you can boil it down to 2 minutes or less, you will get a great response from the audience with ideally some engagement in the form of social shares or clicks on your link, which I did on the social media channels I shared the above video on:
Digital marketing relies heavily on emerging trends so link your videos to trending # or events for example. Getting to the point right at the start will help you lock in users and tell a compelling story that is not too long and overwhelming. Remember: you want to get their attention and lead them to your website or post, so make sure you include a call to action!
8. Social Media Optimization Strategies
Different social media use different video formats for their video services. On Instagram, you can have both landscape and portrait videos, but on YouTube, horizontal is still preferred.
Knowing what video format works best for each social media platform is hugely important to curating converting content. Not only do you get to customize the video format for different platforms, but you can have an exclusive video for each and redirect your audience from all channels to your website. Having different sources of leads will help you achieve higher lead generation and conversion results.
Even though Tik-Tok launched the trend of portrait videos, it has been adopted by many other platforms. Facebook and Instagram now support both portrait and landscape videos, and YouTube is also experimenting with this idea. Every time a platform releases a new feature, its organic reach of that will be extremely high. You can use this to your advantage.
9. Use Music
Trending songs have been a great way to get more likes and views for videos. It is a great way to get more engagement on your post. You will have to sync the audio to the video, and this can be done via editing and social media apps.
In recent times, pairing good content with great music has been a winning formula for many. Not only does it bring a familiar aspect to the reel, but it also makes it more engaging. Some audio and music additions have the potential to be converted into skits too. Therefore, many of the top creators focus on the right music for their videos.
These short and relatable skits can be shared by people due to their high relativity. Companies have been capitalizing on these skits to present their brands in a semi-formal and endearing way. This, along with trending music, is one of the few ways with which you can grow your blog exponentially and organically.
10. Make the most of Subtitles
Adding subtitles to your video is great for people who might not be familiar with your content, or language, or who sometimes just miss out on what you are saying. Many people like to watch videos without sound, and subtitles can help you get your message across even if they are not listening.
11. CTAs are more important than ever
Including a call-to-action at the end of your video is a great way to direct people to your website. You will tell people exactly what to do and provide relevant information and links in the video description.
With possibly millions of people watching your content, a clear-cut CTA helps you to get into your sales funnels. The CTA should match the tone of the video and your brand’s mission and be attention-grabbing too.
12. Repurpose old content
Not everyone knows or has seen all your videos. If a video performs well, no one says that you cannot post it again. You can remake it and share it with your new followers. Strategically sharing older content will help you optimize and maximize your reach.
You can recycle a tried and tested piece of content that has been highly engaged with. Such videos or posts are more likely to go viral or have high engagement rates again to drive more traffic to your website and channels. You can repurpose your old content every month so that the new viewers get to see the most successful of your videos but are revamped.
Final Thoughts
Video has been the king of marketing, especially in the world of social media. It is now easier than ever to make a high-quality video with most phone cameras being good enough to do the job.
Use the algorithm of these social media platforms to your advantage to curate content that will be picked up by them. This increases your chance of being seen by people that may not engage well with your written SEO optimised blog content that can be found via search engines.
No matter what your niche or industry is, social media can bring much-needed brand awareness and recognition to your blog or website.
Follow these tips, and you will be able to take maximum advantage of what video and social media have to offer to increase your website traffic and engagement rates.
Blogger and Educator by Passion | Senior Online Media & PR Strategist at ClickDo Ltd. | Contributor to many Education, Business & Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom & Germany | Summer Course Student at the London School of Journalism and Course Instructor at the SeekaHost University.
The beauty of starting a website or blog is that you often don’t know exactly where the journey takes you. You begin with registering a domain and writing about topics that you’re interested in and over time various categories emerge from your overall web content.
The most popular topics that people find your website for through their searches on search engines or social media, may establish your online presence as an expert niche publication in the industries you mainly cover.
This can attract enquiries from journalists, marketers and event organisers or press departments looking for influencers or digital publishers in their field to cover their events and news.
This is the journey I have been on since I started blogging on various websites, which I will share as examples of my editorial work that has led to such collaborations.
I will show you how I went about the whole process, from the enquiry stage to the execution stage of press and event coverage as I have noticed that there is a high demand in this field.
Consider your websites as web properties that people visit when searching for specific information. The more visitors your website attracts, the better of course as you can offer any content publication a wider audience exposure.
You have the opportunity to write about brands and organisations as well as established experts in your niche, you may also be able to conduct exclusive interviews and network, which is all positive ROI for your website.
Event and news coverage can also establish you as a writer, digital marketer, or influencer, especially if you can utilize your populated social media channels for more online exposure.
You can be creative with how you publish such content, and you’ll need to have guidelines set up that clarify the terms and conditions of your coverage of course. See the services I offer in more detail here:
If people are happy with how their events and news are published on your website, they will come back for more. As you can see, I offer press and news release publications, which I offer in two formats: a free plain-text version and a paid media version. I want to give everyone the opportunity to share their news, however, the more value a publication provides, the more work it requires which cannot be offered for free.
I explain this in more detail in my release enquiry response emails for example, which look like this:
Hi,
Thank you for your submission.
We can publish your release on the following relevant sites:
We offer a free plain text publication without any images/videos/hyperlinks or a paid publication with images/videos/hyperlinks for an admin fee of £40. The main difference is that the branding is much more effective with a media publication, and it offers SEO advantages.
I look forward to hearing back from you so that we can go ahead and publish your release within the next 3 working days.
Kind regards,
This can be a beneficial and lucrative option for a webmaster if they market and rank their website well to offer their clients the intended exposure and ROI.
How to cover Events & News as a Blogger & Publisher?
You will have established yourself as an expert in your niche and will therefore bring the necessary know-how to any news and event coverage in your industry.
Another plus is that you can be quite creative with your coverage on your website as you’re the webmaster and make all the rules. You should be up to date with the latest features your website can offer in terms of plugins for example for WordPress sites to offer the best web design and user experience for your clients and visitors.
If you’re not well-versed in this area, you can always speak with a web consultant to make your website extraordinary.
Depending on your website’s unique audience and focus, you can choose certain businesses, experts, or topics you want to cover that you find most suitable and promising. This can be determined by keyword searches with SEO tools and by the nature of enquiries you receive via your website.
The way you cover them can also be flexible if you don’t have to follow guidelines from your partners or if you negotiate these beforehand.
Make sure you have a clear vision of what you’d like to achieve with your event and news coverage and that you also take your partners’ goals and requirements into account. This will help you identify which features to offer, e.g., photography/videography, interviews, research, social media shares/posts, email marketing etc.
Ensure you have the resources to deliver what you offer, e.g., a professional photographer/videographer or required equipment for example.
Find below my examples of different events I have covered for some of the blogs I manage to get an idea:
Top Features of Event & News Coverage Publications
As you can see, the coverage I currently offer has the following features:
Exclusive and unique photographs taken by a professional photographer or provided by a client
Quotes from exhibitors
Information about exhibitors covered
Social media posts that were shared live
Hyperlinks that take readers to the exhibitors’ websites/channels
My own commentary with regards to my expert opinions on what is covered plus tips and recommendations I have enquired about or researched
Depending on the size of an event, it can be difficult to cover everything, so I’d recommend you focus on selected exhibitors, topics, workshops etc. that will be most interesting for your audience based on what you usually cover.
Preparation is key and you should always ask all entities you cover for permission to do so, perhaps even liaise with them prior to the event to discuss possible questions and angles that they’re satisfied with as I have done before conducting these interviews:
I then shared the drafts with the interviewees first before publishing them to get their consent and green light. This is important also with regard to data protection and general professionalism.
Many organisations will want to create awareness of an event before it happens, and they may ask you to publish a press or news release that they normally send you.
You can agree to make this part of your collaboration, or you can agree on a separate arrangement for this.
Here are some examples of how I publish media releases that offer the full range of benefits to my clients for SEO and marketing:
Partners also appreciate coverage on other channels such as social media or YouTube, which I additionally provide as you can see in the below examples:
What’s the future of Events & News Publications for Bloggers & Publishers?
Since the websites I manage have grown and increased their monthly organic web traffic, I receive news release enquiries daily and for events, it’s less frequent, but also on the rise.
Every business or organisation needs to be visible on the internet nowadays and it’s not sufficient to just publish a few posts on social media if you want to reach a wider and more diverse audience.
Crunching some numbers, there is a clear upward trend for higher demand in the online publishing industry:
63% of journalists said news announcements and press releases are what they want from their PR contacts, indicating that most reporters want to continue interacting with their PR professionals in the same way they have historically.
22% reported that original research on trends and market data was also important to them, offering a new opportunity for PR and comms pros to be a source.
44% of journalists say that press releases are their most trustworthy source of brand-related information.
And there is also growing profitability in this sector:
49% of brands are spending less than $10,000 per year on influencer marketing.
23% are spending between $10,000 and $50,000.
12% of marketers are devoting $50,000-$100,000,
5% $100,000-$500,000, and
6% are spending over $500,000.
And according to statista.com more than 2/3 of individuals in Great Britain were either reading or downloading online news, newspapers or magazines in 2020.
If you are intending to take your blog or website to the next level and perhaps also to make money online, you’ll need to find ways to offer partnerships, sponsorships, and collaborations to grow and expand. After all, what good is a website with nothing useful, intriguing, interesting and trending to share?
And to constantly produce content by yourself is extremely hard and time-consuming, plus may not be that diverse.
Consider your options with your website or blog, go through some website monetisation strategies that may be suitable for your web properties and invest in expanding your services and marketing your website.
If you need support with digital marketing, SEO, or web design, I can offer more support via digital marketing agency ClickDo and web host SeekaHost, where I work as an online media and PR strategist. We have various resources and an expert team at hand to help with anything around your web presence.
Simply contact me and I’ll respond to your enquiry in no time. Make the most of your website or blog today!
Blogger and Educator by Passion | Senior Online Media & PR Strategist at ClickDo Ltd. | Contributor to many Education, Business & Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom & Germany | Summer Course Student at the London School of Journalism and Course Instructor at the SeekaHost University.
Driving traffic and measuring conversion have become monumental metrics in modern-day PR and SEO.
With the digital information sharing revolution rife in today’s online arena, exponentially high numbers of active freelance copywriters, businesses, and large corporations are reliant on the myriad of opportunities that the world wide web brings.
Most online users, however, face visibility challenges based on the premise of being tiny droplets in a virtual ocean of network interconnectivity.
Having the potential to influence your digital PR agenda, this begs the question,
As a writer, how can I produce structurally sound, informative, and streamlined press releases that stand out from the crowded copywriting community and cater to my intended audience?
For all copywriters on the rise, PR practitioners, marketers, or small business owners, pay close attention because I’m about to take you on a journey to exploring what confounding factors make for crafting compelling press release content for your digital PR campaigns to flourish with a higher ROI.
What is a Press Release for?
Also referred to as a news release, a press release is a written or recorded statement issued by a communications entity for use by media outlets to garner news coverage.
However, in the digital age, press release publications can contain various media formats such as videos and hyperlinks to additional resources for example. They should therefore be utilized as effectively as possible.
The general structure of a press release includes:
A heading with action verbs.
Addressing the question of “who,” “what,” “why,” and “where” in the first paragraph.
Contextually factual and informative subject matter articulated with understandable language.
Relevant quotes.
A clear call-to-action (CTA)
Modern digital press releases can also include:
Additional information through added hyperlinks to web channels and online resources
Images and graphics to elaborate on the information shared visually
Videos to provide a deeper and more interactive insight into the matter covered
In catering to a targeted online audience, particular angles aim to meet their respective press release type, some of which involve:
New Product Launches
Mergers and Acquisitions
Product Updates
Events
Grand Openings
New Partnerships
Rebranding
Executive Promotions/Hiring
Awards
Investments/Funding
By providing publications with succinctly sufficient newsworthy material delivered in a distinct style, strong press releases pack a punch for media outlets keen to publish intriguing business stories.
How Press Releases are Used in Digital PR
Tactful in spreading the word on the world wide web, press releases are considered valuable pieces of marketing material in the digital PR landscape. Viewed by the masses ideally making up the online community, press releases live in public domains, opening doors for potential stakeholders and customers to view them.
Digital PR Defined
Short for digital public relations, digital PR is a viable online marketing approach copywriters and businesses use to get press coverage and grow their online presence, enabling them to earn honest reviews and respond with comments to requests from journalists.
The Benefits of Digital PR
Effective digital PR practices and their advantageous potential in the marketing arena always undertake to meet nine core factors, namely:
Fast and effective information-sharing
Improving SEO and increasing site traffic
Generating leads
Building online authority
Increasing brand awareness
Improving brand reputation
Generating meaningful engagement
Increasing trust
Sale and revenue boosts
Using Digital PR Services Effectively for Your Press Releases
Formed on the foundation of building strong long-term relationships, digital marketing and PR agencies and other online communication entities network with journalists, bloggers, and influencers from countless fields/sectors of interest to share their press releases, resulting in high-quality backlinks, social media mentions, and improved SEO.
Digital PR is valuable because it introduces PR practitioners, marketers, business owners, and copywriters to a vast array of new target audiences through search engine results pages and editorial article placements on popular sites.
Effective in boosting website traffic, digital PR and media services offer tried and tested ways for digital press releases to get picked up by media outlets and become the source of new inbound links to an individual website. These links help improve search engine optimization of the site, making it easier to source online.
Sharing top tips and excellent examples in the video below, Exposure Ninja vlogger Tim expands on the value of digital PR and the various forms it comes in:
6 Ways to Publish a Press Release for Digital PR
Effective press releases lay the foundation for all successful PR campaigns, which could include a digital eco news or education marketing news angle and this symbiotic strategy puts a ’cause and effect’ tactic in place to gain publicity. By turning to press release services to boost your SEO, you can expect a substantial rise in your press coverage via prominent publications and big-time broadcast media outlets.
Want to get your press releases noticed online without fault?
Here are my top six tips for meticulously manifesting a perfectly packaged press release of irrefutable worth in the age of digital PR based on the press releases I approve and publish daily as a blog editor:
“A press release is successful if it makes the phone ring or the email ding. Press releases should be a catalyst for further action, not the final result.”
A relevant news story or official announcement is the starting point of all press releases. To get essential messaging spread through a media outlet, the reporter, or editor, must feel your story is newsworthy to form the basis of an idea to cover. Consequently, the broader topic must align with the editorial ethos of the publication and the interests of the audience it serves.
Journalists are often frustrated by the high influx of news releases that aren’t relevant to their work. After recognizing this problematic pattern, they won’t hesitate to send future press releases straight to ‘trash’ without reading a word. Avoid tarnishing your online reputation by putting out too many press releases of minimal value and focus more on producing valuable news that gives something back to the reader for premium publications to cover.
Researching is also critical when pitching newsworthy press releases as especially data that offers certain revelations, ideally presented also with graphics or additional reading, is often the key to getting your foot in the door of the bigger publications.
Reporters often appreciate the time writers devote to familiarising themselves with their content scope. By meeting the core interests of the publications you reach out to, they’ll hopefully reward your due diligence with press coverage you can add to your growing online portfolio.
2. Compel & Inspire Your Audience
Honestly speaking,
Stale stories get stale attention – if any.
Considering the staggeringly high number of press releases journalists and editors receive daily, inspiration is the key to unlocking their interest in your material. So, presenting your newsworthy story in a visually compelling way, written with an article-like feel and airiness of authenticity, may convince an editor of a story’s merit.
Headlines can either capture or lose a reader’s attention, so coming up with a catchy headline and captivating email subject line is essential for producing effective press releases. When benchmarking your divided commitments to the overall task, remember to allocate a significant amount of time and consideration to make the headline as compelling and clickable as possible.
3. Personalise Your Quotes
A quote gives the impression an article is the result of an interview, presenting a press release with engrossing curiosity and spontaneity to a message.
By adding short quotes to your press release, you make it easy for reporters and editors to quickly and creatively convert your message into a piece of earned media, bringing your written material to life. In this way, efficiency is key as an underlying motivator for reporters with time-sensitive deadlines.
When presented from a personal perspective, quotes can provide nuances in a story that perfectly articulates its core message, having a more powerful impact on readers.
Getting directly to the point, always ensure that your quotes are informative yet brief. Use them to reinforce the compelling message you want the reader to remember and avoid including absurd and overtly sensationalized wording.
Lastly, in your quotes, point out why the subject matter (i.e., new product, announcement, event, etc.) is important enough to warrant press release coverage for the targeted audience.
4. Support Your Content with Added Media
Although there are countless ways of telling the same story, a picture speaks a thousand words. Images, video, audio, infographics, and other types of supportive and downloadable content to your press release provide easy access to digital elements that work to enhance your piece’s overall attractiveness.
Added media will also help publications better understand your general messaging and factual framework, providing a structurally informative background for a media outlet’s audience.
Being accommodating to media outlets by providing them with video clips, exclusive or unique photos, and recorded interviews saves them time. Subsequently, they have more creative freedom to repurpose and package your content in more creative and engaging ways – almost as if they were there to cover the stories themselves.
For SEO purposes added media to increase engagement with the content, which reduces the bounce rate.
5. Know Your Audience
Equally as important as knowing what you are pitching, knowing who you are pitching to is a vital element to producing a successful press release. It is also critical to understand that a newsworthy story for one outlet might not have the same value as another.
In essence, influencing the perceptions of the outlet you pitch to relies heavily on your knowledge of the publication’s target audience. As such, I urge you not to apply the “spray and pray” method – this technique just won’t cut it!
6. Connect Your Social Media with Your Outreach Agenda
Turning to alternative online avenues like social media to connect with your audience on a more personable level can tip the scales in favor of the in-person goals you set out to achieve in your networking initiatives.
In contrast to traditional media outlets, social media establishes a more direct line of communication to the delight of specific target audiences. With many journalists turning to their Twitter feeds to consume and distribute the latest scoop, copywriters, businesses, and PR professionals must now adapt to the shifting tide of news towards social media by reaching out to publications via platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram to get their stories covered.
By maintaining relationships with journalists and influencers through regular communication and coverage via social media, ideas get exchanged, increasing the potential to discuss industry topics and other topics in alignment with your interests.
Social media helps you connect with different publication entities, allowing you to build bonds that may later be beneficial when the perfect opportunity arises for you to tell a story or share information in a way that meets their needs. This approach formulates and fortifies trust and respect, making pitches easier to deliver.
Conclusion
Competition is stiff in the digital arena, as the number of writers and PR practitioners virtually outnumber those of journalists. Although there is massive merit in the methodically marketable digitized ways of producing and distributing structurally sound press releases for media outlet publishing, the distinguishing factor between flourishing or flopping relies on the relationships built based on trust and mutual benefit.
With the limitless creative possibilities of originality forming a solid foundation at the frontier of all things newsworthy, there’s no cut-and-dried formula for what a press release should include.
Using my insights as the editor of digital PR platforms such as londonbusinessnews.com or greenlivingblog.org.uk, I can help you carve out a focus for your press release and determine how content composition, digital PR resources, and social media can help you showcase your noteworthy news in the best way possible.
You can get in touch with me if you have any further questions regarding digital PR as I am more than happy to help.
Blogger and Educator by Passion | Senior Online Media & PR Strategist at ClickDo Ltd. | Contributor to many Education, Business & Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom & Germany | Summer Course Student at the London School of Journalism and Course Instructor at the SeekaHost University.
Looking back at the year 2021, my first year working remotely as an Online Marketing & PR Strategist for ClickDo Ltd. and SeekaHost Ltd. full-time, I had some wonderful moments, enjoying freedom and the digital nomad lifestyledespite restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here are some impressions of my 2021 as a digital nomad & my takeaways:
Wherever I work from I look for opportunities to swim, exercise and use a sauna and steam room:
Summer is my favourite time of year:
whenever I get a break from the laptop, I enjoy the sun, sea and the best beaches in the UK:
Working on a computer all day long:
I realised how important movement breaks are at the home office and have added a standing desk, an exercise bike and yoga equipment to my home office:
Especially during the lockdowns I understood the impact of being restricted with moving freely and this is reflected in this short video by photographer and videographer Petra Eujane:
Final verdict of 2021:
It’s been a year full of flexible yet hard work that challenges but equally fulfils me and I look forward to more remote working perhaps outside the UK in 2022 as a digital nomad.
If you want to give it a go:
Then check out my digital nomad guide and let me know how you get on by contacting meor reaching out on social media:
Blogger and Educator by Passion | Senior Online Media & PR Strategist at ClickDo Ltd. | Contributor to many Education, Business & Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom & Germany | Summer Course Student at the London School of Journalism and Course Instructor at the SeekaHost University.
London, my home and a city that normally never sleeps is about to be in lockdown as I write this with bars, pubs and restaurants closed from tomorrow as the government announced today.
So, I decided to have my last drink in public before I have to have it at home in isolation.
I sit by the river Thames with a view over St. Paul’s. While I look through the menu, I ask myself: which flavour do I want to taste last before I live in isolation?
It’s tough, I’m indecisive. I hate having to do this and without sounding dramatic here, I feel I can slightly relate to someone on death row having to choose their last meal.
Tough Decisions lie ahead
Ok, I can do this. I go for something cheerful, full of life, refreshing yet grounding. A cocktail with a strong pineapple flavour, however, not overpowering, not sweet. Well balanced with gin and topped with lavender foam. I am in love; I feel free looking out to London’s ever-changing but continuously impressive skyline.
In the background I hear legendary Abba singing “there’s not a soul out there, no one to hear my prayer”. The bar is not full on this Friday night, but a few people are enjoying a drink like me. I reminisce on the days where I would enjoy a glass of wine on a Canary Wharf rooftop bar while writing blog articles under the sun. The uncertainty of when I will be able to work outside my home again while freely choosing where to work from gives me an eerie sensation.
I take a sip and realize that the intensity of the flavours and notes in my cocktail, the colour, the shimmering foam – they would not feel the same in isolation. The surroundings of where I have my drink, the atmosphere, the view, they all add to my sensory experience.
Working from Home during Isolation
I see an empty boat passing and I wonder how I will make it through this isolation period. Thankfully, I have so many pleasurable experiences to go back to, so many amazing people I can have a drink with in virtual meetings. And I have my main work tool with me all the time so that I can write, communicate and record everything I do – my laptop & smartphone.
For now, I will have to work from home. No matter how much I love to travel and work from different places, I know this is the time to put my head down and work hard. Because there certainly will come a time where I can live the laptop lifestyle again and when it comes, I want to be ready for it.
And for the cocktail, I’m confident it will taste so much better once I can truly appreciate it again. Alone or with someone somewhere again.
Blogger and Educator by Passion | Senior Online Media & PR Strategist at ClickDo Ltd. | Contributor to many Education, Business & Lifestyle Blogs in the United Kingdom & Germany | Summer Course Student at the London School of Journalism and Course Instructor at the SeekaHost University.
Stand out from the crowd with a sharp and to-the-point video that focuses on what’s the core message of your post or content. Having a script, even for short videos, will help you lay out the groundwork and main goal for the video. You can refer to the script when in doubt and add more elements later on.
People love seeing entertaining and informational videos on social media that keep them engaged. The most successful videos on video streaming platforms are the ones that manage to combine both. Being familiar with different types of videos will help you maximize your reach across all social media platforms.
Good storytelling is one of the most invaluable skills that any blogger or content writer can have.
Visuals are everything in the online world. Having an eye-pleasing video is a must, and key elements are ensuring you are in a well-lit space for example, and capturing a video with adequate sound quality.
Although gear is not the most necessary thing in the world, having good gear can make a world of difference. A tripod, camera, and ring light will take you a long way. You can then later add on a mic for great audio capture. This is a great digital marketing strategy too.
Different social media use different video formats for their video services. On Instagram, you can have both landscape and portrait videos, but on YouTube, horizontal is still preferred.
Trending songs have been a great way to get more likes and views for videos. It is a great way to get more engagement on your post. You will have to sync the audio to the video, and this can be done via editing and social media apps.
Not everyone knows or has seen all your videos. If a video performs well, no one says that you cannot post it again. You can remake it and share it with your new followers. Strategically sharing older content will help you optimize and maximize your reach.
Formed on the foundation of building strong long-term relationships, 
According to Sally Stewart, author of 
A quote gives the impression an article is the result of an interview, presenting a press release with engrossing curiosity and spontaneity to a message.
Although there are countless ways of telling the same story, a picture speaks a thousand words. Images, video, audio, infographics, and other types of supportive and downloadable content to your press release provide easy access to digital elements that work to enhance your piece’s overall attractiveness.
Turning to alternative online avenues like social media to connect with your audience on a more personable level can tip the scales in favor of the in-person goals you set out to achieve in your networking initiatives.
with gin and topped with lavender foam. I am in love; I feel free looking out to London’s ever-changing but continuously impressive skyline.
I see an empty boat passing and I wonder how I will make it through this isolation period. Thankfully, I have so many pleasurable experiences to go back to, so many amazing people I can have a drink with in virtual meetings. And I have my main work tool with me all the time so that I can write, communicate and record everything I do – my laptop & smartphone.
there certainly will come a time where I can live the